1999-2005 Post-doc, University of Colorado at Denver and HSC, Denver, CO

Honor, Award, Activities and Societies:

Honors Graduate Research Grant Award. California State University

Member, Phi Theta Phi Honor Society

Member, American Association of Immunologists

7th and 9thConference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections Travel Award

Training Grant Award, Division of Infectious Diseases

Research Travel Award, 12th Annual National Conference of the National Institutes of Health Centers for AIDS

Tab Content Two

The primary focus of my research is to delineate the mechanisms responsible for HIV-associated CD4+ T cell dysfunction.During chronic HIV infection HIV-specific CD4+ T cells are skewed toward an effector phenotype that is unable to produce IL-2 and proliferate and the loss of these cell to function has been correlated with disease severity.Most recently we have been assessing the role of costimulatory receptor, such as protein death receptor 1 (PD-1), in the generation of HIV-specific CD4+ T cell dysfunction.I am also interested in a novel humanized mouse model of HIV infection for the study anti-HIV immunotherapeutic agents and the role of CD4+ T cells in the development of chronic beryllium disease.As the director of the flow cytometry facility, I am steadily working on the development of novel flow-based methods for assessing the role of antigen-specific T cells in HIV and lung disease.